Winograd Final Report May Wait Until 2008

The Winograd Commission will send letters of warning to the people who may be hurt by its final report and will enable them to read the evidence collected by the commission, to enable them to prepare a defense. This means that date for publication of the final report by the commission, which was expected in October, will be moved back, apparently by several months.

Commission Chairman Judge (ret.) Eliyahu Winograd made it clear in a letter he sent Wednesday to the Chief Military Defender, Col. Orna David, that the letters of warning will indeed be issued, as she had demanded of him. David also asked that IDF officers criticized by the report be allowed to bring their own witnesses to the stand and hand in both written and oral summaries to the committee, before a final report is written up.

The delay in the publication of the report, which is expected to be very harsh towards Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, is seen as being welcome news for Olmert, and also for Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who will thus be given more "breathing space" before he has to resign. Barak has stated that he intends to resign when the final Winograd Report is published.